VIA commuter train 92 was switching tracks to avoid a work site at the exact moment it derailed, the Transportation Safety Board announced on Monday.

The derailment on Sunday killed two locomotive engineers and a trainee, and seriously injured three passengers; 42 other passengers were taken to hospital, where eight remained on Monday afternoon.

It is not known what exactly sent the six-car Toronto-bound train careering off the tracks Sunday afternoon but the answer lies in the so-called “black box” — actually a bright orange metal case — now in the hands of the Transportation Safety Board. The Transportation Safety Board has started downloading information from the event recorder, Tom Griffith, a regional senior investigator with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, said in a Monday morning press conference.

Nevertheless, investigators “will have to go a little farther” because of the damage done to the box during the crash. “We are going through the coaches to see why the injuries occurred; if there is something in there that, other than the speed of the train, caused the injuries, if seats came loose or whatever,” said Mr. Griffith.

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The event recorders will tell investigators the speed, time, what controls were being activated or were not active — such as the train’s whistle or brakes — at the time of impact. It does not record audio or video from the locomotive, as is often the case for airplanes.

Meanwhile, Halton Regional Police are conducting their own investigation to determine whether the six-car train was brought down by vandalism or sabotage. “Our primary role is to determine if anything criminal has taken place here,” said Sgt. Dave Cross of Halton Regional Police.

Killed are veteran railroaders Ken Simmonds, Peter Snarr and Patrick Robinson, 40. Both Mr. Simmonds, 56, and Mr. Snarr, 52, started their railroad careers with CN in the late 1970s, and had been locomotive engineers with VIA since 2007. The two men were “top notch engineers” wrote friend Tommy Rocker in an email to the Post. “There are certainly some engineers who are distractable, grandstanders and slackers but not these two men.”

Mr. Robinson was in the cab as a trainee. New to VIA, Mr. Robinson had worked on trains since 1990, including a stint with CN. It is not known whether Mr. Robinson was at the controls at the time of the incident, but he would have been under strict supervision, said Mr. Griffith.

“My understanding is that they were dedicated employees doing their job and something went horribly wrong,” Teamsters Canada Rail Conference President Rex Beatty said on Monday.

The locomotive containing the three rolled onto its side and collided with a trackside building in the seconds after the derailment. The three were pronounced dead on the scene. “They didn’t stand a chance,” Mr. Griffith said. Emergency crews were not able to extract the men’s bodies until 8 p.m., nearly five hours after the crash.

Only minutes from its destination at the time of the crash, the train was crossing over from one track to another as one was being worked on by a crew. “Think about it as a detour around that work area,” Mr. Beatty told CBC News on Monday. Trains on this stretch in Burlington are required to slow from 80 to 15 miles per hour, but it is not known whether the drivers of train 92 had complied.

Emergency crews were first alerted to a problem at 3:28 p.m. when an area resident called, indicating a train had derailed. Nine more calls poured in over the next four minutes, with passengers inside the derailed train reporting chaos, blood and people injured. One passenger was reportedly ejected from the train through a window.

When first responders arrived they found one of the passenger cars “completely on its side,” and another “on a bit of a slant,” said Halton Regional Police Chief Gary Crowell, speaking at a news conference Sunday night.

The three most seriously injured suffered a broken leg, a back injury and a heart attack. Burlington Fire had 28 firefighters at the scene on Sunday, many of whom had seen derailments along the Burlington corridor in years past. On February 18, 2008, a broken wheel on one of CN’s rail cars caused 19 freight cars to jump the tracks only meters from Sunday’s crash, causing delays and cancellations, but no injuries.

Passenger injured in the crash have already begun contacting Sutts, Strosberg LLP, a law office that successfully led a class-action lawsuit against Via Rail and CN after a 1999 crash.

“We’re inclined to start an action, given our experience in that area,” said Sharon Strosberg, adding that the firm was eyeing a multimillion class action suit.

On Monday, as officials in orange safety vests scoured the tracks around the fallen train cars and reporters gather 50 metres away awaiting more news, rail passengers at a nearby train station waited somewhat anxiously to board

“I’m not too freaked out, although I did think twice this morning,” said Holly Lesperance, 19, a Ryerson University business student returning from reading week. “It seems just like a freak accident. I still think it’s more dangerous to get in a car than a train.”

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